Preparing E-Commerce for the Post-COVID Bounce Back

Posted by MrLukeCarthy

COVID-19 has switched up life as we know it, and it’s unlikely to stop doing so for some time.

E-commerce shopping is a perfect example of how things have changed, and in a number of ways.

If you feel like Shopify has been dropping huge, disruptive news bombs practically each week now, you’re right!

And who’d have guessed that in the UK, the exclusively online supermarket, Ocado, is now worth more than brick-and-mortar grocers Morrisons, Sainsbury's, and Marks and Spencer combined.

The speed of transformation in e-commerce since the COVID-19 outbreak (an already fast-paced industry) has been savage.

Supply chains are under strain for many brands selling online (especially where demand is high and supplies are low). How do you best manage expectations and maximize every opportunity to sell to your target audience?

With your consumers now relying on the world of online shopping more than ever, how can you be sure you're getting your fair share of that online retail pie?

Well, this post is designed to help you answer precisely these questions. Whether your sales have taken a hit or you have “off the wall” levels of demand, here are some ideas to help you navigate that bounce back and to help customers stay in love with your brand.

Pay close attention to changing on site search behavior

Your site search is a goldmine of insight, especially right now. Seriously.

Frequently checking in to understand how and what your customers are looking for once they get to your store can reveal a bunch of opportunities.

It's possible that before COVID-19 took a stronghold on everyday life, customers had different contexts in mind when searching for your products.

For example, searches for “gloves” today vs. in January are likely to be visitors searching for two separate products entirely. It's important to ensure that you're serving today's customer sufficiently and addressing their context correctly to remain relevant and to improve conversion.

Here's an extreme example, but it's a poignant one nonetheless. For context, Holland and Barrett are a popular, high street healthcare retailer with a strong web presence here in the UK.

When searches for “coronavirus” had skyrocketed and demand for hand sanitizer and Paracetamol (another brand of acetaminophen, like Tylenol) were painfully high, what I found incredible was that searching for “coronavirus” on their website yielded no results.

This seemed particularly jarring for a retailer that, first, sells items that have been scientifically proven to kill and help prevent the spread of the virus and, second, is a dedicated healthcare business.

Not only does this throw a huge wrench in the works when it comes to CX and customer perception, this tiny yet costly oversight is likely to have cost them sales and customers too.

Customers are also searching for products that aren't typically associated with a certain brand or online store due to exhausted stocks elsewhere.

For example, the top three search terms for one of my e-commerce clients are now "Mask", "mask", and "PPE". The search terms “mask”, “PPE”, and close variants were practically non-existent prior to mid-May.

Kit and Ace, a clothing retailer, has responded to precisely this changing behavior. After seeing a huge spike in the number of site searches for masks, they're now introducing a new, premium, scientifically-derived mask that also fits their brand. They’re donating 100% of profits from the masks, but this tactic will likely to drive more sales in their other categories too.

This is a great move, especially since apparel sales have shrunk during this time. It's important to find emerging opportunities when typical product lines are no longer in demand.

The point I'm trying to make here is that, in order to succeed coming out of the other side of this pandemic, you need to ensure you're fully in tune with the wants and needs of today's customer — whatever that looks like for you. Using site search can absolutely give you a huge window into their demands and interests.

If products are out of stock, offer excellent alternatives (where possible)

As touched on earlier, supply chain management is going to be increasingly challenging — especially in areas where demand is outstripping supply — yet so many retailers miss out here.

For some products, it doesn't matter how hard you try, every retailer has them listed as “out of stock.”

For branded items that have stock issues globally, being the retailer that offers a perfectly good alternative could be enough to win over that visitor and win the sale that other retailers have lost.

To use a specific example, FTX is a manufacturer of radio-controlled cars, and is a brand sold on Europe e-commerce site Wheelspin. There's an FTX item that you cannot get before the end of June (for love nor money) on any website due to COVID-19. The pandemic has forced factories to close and that disrupts production for many goods.



Specifically, in this example, it's the FTX brushed motor that's become victim to supply chain issues. However, there's a brand that has a perfectly suitable alternative item that's identical in specification, and it’s in stock:



Proactively offering solid alternatives with as few compromises as possible can be a great way of winning sales and delighting customers in a way that your competitors likely won't be.

Add an “in stock only” filter

Continuing on the topic of store stock and managing a turbulent supply chain, a simple but welcome feature is to add an “items in stock” filter.

It goes without saying that allowing customers to browse items they’re able to get their hands on quickly will go down well and could help improve conversion on your website.

Another benefit of adding such a filter is the ability to bring light to other lines that are typically overshadowed by more popular (but now out of stock) items.

Taking this a step further, you could also help your customers experience by adding a filter for products expected to arrive within a certain timeframe, or filter out those that can be backordered.

Add an “email me when back in stock” CTA

If you're a retailer struggling to get stock of popular lines, there's a good chance you're not the only retailer with that problem. Although it may not be possible to get stock any quicker than your competitors, you can absolutely ensure that you're the first to let potential customers know that it's back in stock.

Sweeten the deal by personalizing the back-in-stock email

Letting a potential customer know that the item's back in stock is great, but why not suprise and delight your customers by taking the opportunity to personalize this email too?

Offering personalized cross-sells of the item that's now back in stock can be a great way to not only give them the good news, but give them additional reasons to visit your shop and potentially increase basket value simultaneously. It's certainly a win, win here.

Remarket to people when items are back in stock

People are spending more time online — fact. So it makes sense to reach your audience where they're most likely to be spending time for the foreseeable future.

Depending on the popularity of an item (and how much traffic is going to it whilst it's remained unavailable), you could create a retargeting list based on visitors that expressed an interest in it now that it's back in stock.

This can prove to be a great way to reach people, say on social media, that aren't particularly responsive to email but are spending increased amounts of time on their favorite social platforms.

Although this may not be scalable, or at least I haven't found a way to make it so, doing this across your top-selling lines or lines with greater margins could prove to be a successful way of pulling engaged and semi-invested visitors back to your site.

Don't be afraid to increase prices where necessary

Let's not forget the basic principles of commerce, right? High demand (coupled with low supply) increases prices.

Businesses shouldn't feel guilty for increasing prices, but of course, there's a difference between a justifiable increase and straight ripping people off (as demonstrated below):



For context, four tins of 400g Heinz Spaghetti Plus Sausage would retail at around £4 in UK supermarkets (that’s about $5 at current exchange rates).

Think about this scenario for a second: You and your staff are potentially working in environments that could pose serious health risks. Plus there's additional costs to consider in order to keep people safe. PPE, cleaning products, masks, sick pay for unwell staff, etc., all these factors will push up the cost per sale and erode your margins.

Equally, there are no guarantees right now. Those all-time high levels of sales could come slamming to a fierce halt at any time. Whether that's caused by a change in demand, decrease in stock, or your business is no longer able to fulfil orders due to an internal COVID-19 outbreak.

Increasing prices fairly to better protect your business against these mostly uncontrollable factors is not a bad thing. In my opinion, it's just good business sense.

You've got to ensure your business is as robust as it can be when faced with these potential eventualities. Increasing your prices fairly can help to better protect it.

Discover creative ways to connect with your audience

As the saying goes, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. It's a huge cliché, but it absolutely rings true and remains a powerful statement today.

Finding ways to be creative, cut through the noise, and engage with your audience is essential to staying relevant. Especially if your customer's cash is heading elsewhere right now.

Here's an example of a potentially powerful idea that I've been working on for a client in the world of apparel — one of the more fiercely affected industries during the pandemic.

People are spending less on fashion, and even less at the luxury end of the scale. So, why not let your audience build themselves a virtual dream wardrobe? Something they'd consider buying for a night out, things they'd have in their suitcase for a summer vacation, etc. It's a fairly simple idea, but let's think about the impact this could have for both customer and business:

You're throwing down a few slices of “feel good”So many people miss going out, right? Heading to bars, clubs, celebrating a milestone, going on a vacation, or even just getting back to the office, so many of us associate buying new outfits as part of those moments.

Allowing your loyal fans and customers to pick out their money’s-no-object dream outfits based on some predetermined wardrobes (office attire, night out, summer holiday) is naturally going to invoke some positive emotions and memories — especially if you inject a social element into it by allowing people to share their collections.

But other wins can be extracted from such an idea too:

You're collecting valuable user data: You're getting some valuable insight into the sort of clothing people may buy when lockdown policies begin to wind back. This could help to get a better understanding of demand so you can work on reinvigorating your supply chain successfully.

Plus, you're getting an idea of what items visitors would put together to help educate new fashion trends and inform “recommended for you” personalization.

You're helping to alleviate boredom: In some ways, this kind of activity is adding an element of gamification to apparel. With so many people stuck indoors experiencing high levels of procrastination and boredom, it can help to cut through and detach from the realities of lockdown.

You’re creating an opportunity to welcome sales when things pick back up:

Offering an incentive (say 15% off your dream collections) once we're on the cusp of restoring “normality” could be a really powerful way of encouraging and helping to re-energize apparel and fashion spend online. It's also a great way to celebrate the comeback.

Last but not least, you're building brand affinity: I've said it before, but it's extremely important, so I'll say it again: remaining relevant and keeping marketing efforts up is essential to ensure you remain in good shape when society heads towards the new normal.

Having your audience resonate with your brand and remember your positive actions whilst they're away will be a major influence on your ability to maintain and deepen those customer relationships post-pandemic.

Final thoughts: the rise of big brands diving into D2C eCommerce

What's amazing to see is a huge move by big household names and brands. They're now setting up their own direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce outfits, and on the surface, appear to be going head-to-head with supermarkets.

To highlight a few of my favorite examples, there's snacks.com — created by Frito-Lay — shipping their brand’s snacking staples across North America.

Then there’s Heinz to Home, delivering popular Heinz products to households in the UK.



How these new D2C e-commerce brands fare in the long term will be interesting to see, but what’s certain is the pandemic is accelerating and evolving e-commerce in a way that's not been seen before.

As a final note, to those of you hit hard by COVID-19, may I wish you a speedy recovery — personally and professionally.

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The State of Local SEO Industry Report 2020, Announced

Posted by MiriamEllis

Moz’s very warmest thanks to the 1,453 respondents who volunteered time to contribute to this second installation of our industry survey. It’s rewarding to have such a large survey group; as this report details in high relief, the work of marketing a single business location can pass through a dozen hands.

Owners, staff, in-house SEOs, agencies, creative directors, webmasters, project managers, and consultants may all be contributing to promoting just one local company. By capturing their hands-on experience, we get the big picture of local SEO as an effort not confined to experts, but rather, requiring all hands on deck.

In this report, you’ll find insights to share with coworkers and clients on:

• Company infrastructure
• Local ranking factors
• Tool & software usage
• Gaps in the marketplace
• High ROI strategies and tactics

Get the full report!

A window in time on local business marketing

The data in our survey depicts the local SEO industry both before and during the public health emergency. As such, it’s an eagle’s eye view of both the status of marketing priorities up to the present and a gauge of preparedness for change. Change has always been the only constant in local SEO — our industry is accustomed to an environment that can turn on a dime, literally overnight. This challenging setting toughens businesses for tough times.

No one knows yet how COVID-19 may ultimately alter consumer behavior, but in the short term, one good sign which has emerged from the State of the Local SEO industry report is that local businesses were strongly embracing organic assets prior to the pandemic. Not long ago, you might have encountered narratives about websites being “dead” due to the dominance of local packs, zero click SERPs, and other Google features. Fortunately, our report indicates that many marketers have wisely ignored such schools of thought and have continued to promote the vital role local business websites play in connecting with communities.

For now, if connection is curbside or delivery instead of foot traffic, local businesses which have been thoughtfully maintaining their websites own a strong platform for next moves — perhaps implementing local e-commerce, or taking orders via form submissions, or hosting gated video consultations.

Access to the State of the Local SEO Industry’s data will enable you to do your own analysis of the sum total of marketing knowledge up to the present with an eye to future strategy. Here’s a preview of 3 emergent narratives that particularly caught my eye.

Proximity falls to third as a local ranking factor

Our 2019 report cited user-to-business proximity as the dominant influence on Google’s local pack rankings. So has every Local Search Ranking Factors survey since 2017. This is a surprising departure. Download the report for further analysis and view the numbers in the light of how Google might adjust proximity based on new factors like curbside pickup and local delivery.

YOY, 19% more respondents are involved with offline marketing

94% (up from 75%) of our survey group are consulting with clients at least some of the time on topics like real-world customer service and consumer policies.This statistic professionally delights me, because of my years of advocacy here on the Moz blog for local search marketers to care deeply about what happens in real time between consumers and brands. Some enterprising agency should consider doing a webinar or eBook on the history of brick-and-mortar marketing so our industry can engage in deeper levels of learning and make informed decisions about future offline marketing strategy.

COVID-era customer fulfillment strategies are here to stay



51% of respondents intend to permanently offer amenities like home delivery, curbside pickup, and video conferencing. Now is the time for innovative marketing agencies to put in the work researching the best possible solutions for clients for the long haul. Will it be in-house delivery fleets, or outsourcing to third parties like Instacart and Doordash? Which e-commerce platform is the best, not just for UX but for SEO? Many brands swiftly cobbled together new services to meet the state of emergency, but as time goes by, consumer feedback and marketing analysis will point the way to thoughtfully choosing the best transactional methodologies and platforms. All of these technologies predate the pandemic, but the year ahead is going to see them much more fully tested.

Please accept our invitation to download the free State of the Local SEO Industry Report 2020, with 30+ timely questions on topics that impact how you work, what to offer, and how to improve your strategy for the year ahead whether you own a local business or are in the business of marketing local brands!

Get the full report!

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How to Network Online Like a Champ

Posted by cheryldraper

This conference season feels a bit different, doesn't it? Where we're usually globetrotting from event to event, this year most conferences have either postponed their dates or switched to online, remote-friendly formats, offering video sessions by top-notch speakers or live streams with open chats. But what about everyone's favorite bonus during conference season — networking?

Thankfully, all is not lost! With a little ingenuity and virtual elbow grease, you can still forge new professional relationships over an internet connection rather than a cocktail. (And hey, nothing's stopping you from enjoying a nice, frosty Mozcow Mule or tasty mocktail in your home office space, right?) In our current reality of social distancing, marketing conference networking will look different, but it's not going anywhere. Read on for tips on how to effectively network while remote!

Step 1: Look for networking opportunities

Depending on which virtual event you attend, the networking opportunities will look different. Keeping a creative eye out for opportunity is key to your success!

Live chats

Much like during regular conferences, there are bound to be live chats happening. They may happen on the actual event platform, or they may take place on social media. Some events will use a platform like Zoom that allows viewers to chat with each other within the platform, while others may have more of a broadcast format where chats happen on Twitter with a hashtag.

Joining Q&As

A super valuable aspect of conferences is being able to speak to presenters after they give their talk. Sometimes this happens during a predetermined time slot, such as right after the presentation, or it may happen when you catch them in the lobby or at an event later on. Either way, this time to ask questions about their expertise is a huge value-add to the experience.

With conferences going virtual and live chats happening publicly during the presentations, this Q&A time has shifted a bit. Instead of having to wait for the presentation to be over, in some cases, presenters will reply to questions from the live chat as they're speaking. Some panels are pre-recorded, giving speakers a chance to interact on various platforms during the event itself. Some events will even have specific “presentations” that are more like facilitated Ask Me Anything-style interviews or panels where questions are taken from the audience and posed to the speaker(s).

Birds of a Feather discussions

Many conferences will offer some sort of industry or concept specific conversation facilitation. For instance, at MozCon, we host Birds of a Feather discussions. These discussions are headed up by an industry professional and have predetermined topics such as EAT, AI, Gutenberg, etc. Other times, these conversations may be organized and headed up by attendees.

In a virtual setting, these will likely be smaller breakout groups using some sort of video chat software. Zoom, specifically, has created a way for conferences to organize these “breakout sessions” in advance.

Birds of a Feather conversations are one of the best ways to connect as there is a common ground established from the get-go. These. Are. Your. People. Connections here will likely be the most valuable.

Step 2: Get active

No matter where the chats are happening, be sure you're a part of them! The more you interact, the more likely people are to recognize your name when you reach out after the event. The only caution here is that you have to be sure your interactions are meaningful — don’t just comment clapping hands. Add something to the conversation.

Add insight

The best thing about people is that we're all different and have fresh perspectives to bring to the table. Don’t be afraid to add on to someone’s thoughts.

Let's use a fun example. If someone says that the best mascot hug ever was from Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, you may jump in and ask if they’ve ever met Roger MozBot, famed hugger and robot dancer extraordinaire. Or you could build on the thought by saying something like, “Mickey is a great hugger, I think it’s because he goes over instead of under!”

In both of these instances, you’ve joined the conversation and added value.

Add clarification

Speakers often try to fit a lot of information into a relatively short timeframe. That said, questions will likely arise in the live chats. This could very easily be your time to shine! If you've got knowledge to share, feel free to answer the question to the best of your ability and try to add clarification.

This is absolutely one of the best ways to position yourself as an expert and form a relationship with someone you’ve never met. It allows you to prove you’re knowledgable and give the person something they value for free.

Add sources

Whether you are asking a question, answering a question, or just chiming in with added insight, adding resources in conversation is extremely beneficial. This could mean that you recommend a tool, a person, or an article link. These resources for the other viewers can be extremely beneficial and help you establish your credibility.

Now, we don’t suggest trying to come up with a source for everything, but if you have one right off of the top of your head, dropping a link in the chat may really help someone.

BONUS: Add people on social

While this one's not necessarily about adding value per se, it is about adding. Adding influencers, presenters, or other attendees after interacting with them (even if briefly) may increase your chances of getting a follow-back or accepted request as you'll still be top of mind. Try to add people no later than 24 hours after your last interaction, and consider sending a friendly "hey!" with a note about what you spoke about to keep the connection fresh.

Step 3: Perfect your follow-up

After connecting with people during the online conference, you'll want to follow up with them and stay in touch.

The most important part of following up is the first impression. You don’t want to come right out of the gate with a request of any sort. Instead, look to build a relationship first. This could mean shooting a quick follow-up message recapping your conversation with the person, telling them that you appreciated their time and that you look forward to more conversations.

After sending your initial follow-up, be sure to interact with the person at least once a week to stay top-of-mind. This is easiest on social media as you can like, comment, share their content, and ensure that your name is showing up in their notifications. However, direct messages, emails, and even phone calls are sure to be more impactful.

The best thing you can do when following up is to stick to what you're most comfortable with and be consistent while continuing to add value.

Have fun and be yourself!

The number-one thing you have to offer is yourself. Your experiences make you unique and others can learn from that! So when you are connecting with others, just remember to be yourself. And lastly, have fun! Networking is meant to be fun as it gives you the opportunity to connect with others and build a community. Embrace that connection and enjoy it.

Networking at MozCon Virtual 

Every year, we hear from attendees about how networking is one of their favorite parts of the conference. We made sure to keep it an integral part of this year's virtual event, too — check out all the ways you can connect with speakers, industry experts, attendees, and thought leaders at MozCon Virtual 2020!

In-session Q&A chat

Mid-presentation, pop into the Q&A chat with your real-time questions and get them answered by speakers. You'll also be able to chat with other attendees about the content, provide your own insights, and participate in real-time virtual convos about the session and topic. Speakers will be available to answer questions during their scheduled session times, so it's a perfect opportunity to get clarification, further insight, or forge those all-important connections!

Customizable profiles: Interests, personal bio, tags, and more

Attendees can search for like-minded folks with similar interests based on what you add to your profile when signing in. You can choose to upload your photo, create your biography, add specific interests and tags, and reach out to those you'd like to follow up with.

Create your own "Want-to-Meet" list

Browse attendee profiles and click "want to meet" when you find someone you'd like to reach out to later. With your personal contact info safely hidden, this is a great way to find and get found by those looking for new talent, professional partnerships, debate buddies, and more. Build your list ahead of time, then review in-platform and reach out when you're ready!

Schedule 1:1 meetings

After connecting with someone, you can easily send a meeting request to the folks you've connected with to chat live outside of the bigger group discussions. Your invited guest can choose to accept or decline the invite, and all 1:1 meetings occur directly within the conference platform's meeting rooms, making for easy facilitation!

Birds of a Feather "table" discussions

Birds of a Feather lunch tables are one of the biggest MozCon hits year after year, and we didn't want anyone to miss out! We'll facilitate 30-minute-long group discussions each day of the conference for you to connect with those interested in specific topics via video and audio chat. Each discussion will be led by an industry leader, giving you all the opportunity to say "hey" to the folks whose work you admire and collaborate with them on ideas, theories, obstacles you've faced, and more.

We're super excited about all the networking opportunities at MozCon Virtual — at $129 per ticket, it's an incredible value for growing your digital marketing skillset and your career:

Get my ticket to MozCon Virtual!

Let us know your own best virtual networking tips in the comments. We hope to see you at MozCon this July 14 & 15!

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How-To Content Isn’t Going Anywhere (and What That Means for Your Strategy)

Posted by amandamilligan

I’m a big fan of the Lore podcast, and in a recent episode, the host discussed a book called the Malleus Maleficarum.

Two words starting with the “mal” prefix doesn’t sound super friendly, right?

Well, the book is essentially a guide on how to identify witches and conduct witch trials. It turned out to have quite the horrible impact on society — as we’ve learned in history classes — but the host notes that it’s also one of the first how-tos ever written.

And it was published in 1486, ore than 500 years ago.

How-to content isn’t new, and from what I can tell, it isn’t going anywhere. Look at how many search results come back when you narrow content down to titles including “how to.”



It’s not just that there’s a ton of this type of content, either. People want to read it.

The prominence of “how-to” content

My team at Fractl did a study about how different generations search online. We gave nearly 1,000 people this prompt:

You just got engaged! It’s time to start thinking about the wedding, but you’re not sure where to start. What is the first word or phrase you would search using Google or another search engine?

Thirteen percent of all the respondents’ hypothetical searches had “how to” in them, and the youngest respondents — millennials and Gen Zers — used it the most.

It serves as additional proof for what we already suspected: how-to content remains a staple in the content world.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it? How-tos not only lend themselves to the thrill of learning new information online (and the seemingly endless number of things that are available to learn); they also serve as a tool of empowerment. Even if you don’t know how to do something, you can figure it out just by going online and reading/watching/listening to content someone else put together for you.

If people continue to desire this type of content, how can you make sure you’re incorporating it into your content plans accordingly?

Finding how-to opportunities

In some cases, it’s obvious how more how-to content can help your brand. Perhaps you’re a B2B SaaS company with a product designed to help teams collaborate online. You could write how-to articles about improving communication, transitioning to a new chat client, and plenty of other topics.

It’s important to have these articles, because not only do they speak to a direct need of a certain audience, but they’re also directly related to your brand offering. They’re rife with more natural call-to-action opportunities, and they demonstrate your willingness to help solve a problem.

This article by Brembo is a perfect illustration of this.

After the helpful guide, they have a CTA to:

“Just go to the configurator (www.moto.brembo.com) and enter some simple information about your motorcycle such as brand, engine displacement, model and year. The configurator will search through the entire Brembo line and quickly indicate which Brembo products are available for the selected bike, even including the pad compounds.”

And voilà! You have a useful guide that ties directly into your product.

However, the trick is making sure you’re seizing every opportunity and not settling on just the obvious how-tos.

Here are some ways you can find creative new opportunities:

• Ask your audience. Run a poll on social media. Survey your email list. Call your customers. Whatever your preferred method, ask what they want to see! Get to know their challenges better so you can create content that will address them.
• Research what’s being asked online. You can start by going to Answer the Public or using BuzzSumo’s Questions tool. Both allow you to see what people are asking across the web regarding topics. But you can also look at similar content that exists and see what people are saying in the comments. Is there any confusion? Any points that still need to be covered?
• Talk to your sales team. They’re the ones “on the ground” discussing potential worries and concerns from your clients and customers. If you haven’t already, set up a regular check in with the sales department so you can stay updated on what questions are popping up that the marketing team can answer in its content.

Additionally, for brands that might not have clear ideas for how-to content, it’s important to explore top-of-the-funnel opportunities, which you can do using the same tactics above.

Top-of-the-funnel means that, while the how-to guides might not be directly related to your service offering, they’re still good for introducing your brand to people who are interested in your general industry.

For example, like many other food brands, King Arthur’s Flour has recipes involving flour on their site. However, unlike many other food brands, their article, “How to make high-rising biscuits” has more than 94,000 engagements on Facebook, according to BuzzSumo.

Now, this is arguably middle-of-the-funnel because you need flour to make the biscuits and it’s a flour company creating the content. But people looking this up probably already have flour in their homes. The benefit of creating this content is that now they’re familiar with this brand of flour, and if the recipe goes well, they have more trust in this particular brand.

So, the article doesn’t have to be “how to choose the right type of flour.” It can be something your audience wants to know related to what you offer.

Getting creative with how-to content

Sometimes you want to create a guide that technically might already exist, but you want to do a better job in one way or another.

That’s great! But it means going the extra mile, thinking outside the box, and every other cliche you can think of. And that doesn’t always mean doing something costly or extravagant.

For example, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC released a piece about how to wash your hands correctly. Rather than sticking to the diagrams you see in restaurant bathrooms, they created a clean list of steps followed by a video showing exactly how to execute each step.

Just the addition of the videos made the content much more valuable to readers.

I also love this article from Taste of Home. I’ve read a million recipes on how to make chocolate chip cookies (what? I have a sweet tooth!), but this is the first time I’ve seen one that helps you adapt a basic recipe to make the best cookie for you.

The simple addition of this graphic adds an entirely new value to the piece that so many other variations lack by offering visual representations of textures for each recipe option.

So how can you achieve the same result? When you’ve decided on a topic to write about, do the following:

• Sum up in one sentence exactly what you want to teach people. Be as specific as possible. This will keep you focused when you’re creatively brainstorming how to execute.
• Explore what other how-to content already exists and what they’re lacking. Does the type of content work well for the topic? Is it too long, too confusing, too boring? How can you make yours easier to understand and more interesting?
• Constantly bookmark inspiration you come across. All kinds of content out there can provide you with creative ideas on how to execute a how-to guide. Put all of the links or images in a Google doc to create a sort of virtual vision board, or make it a habit to go to sites like https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/.

Conclusion

Knowing that how-to content is always going to be desired is a great prompt for examining its role in your strategy. Which of your previous how-to pieces have performed the best, which have performed the worst, and what can you learn from both?

Hopefully the tips I’ve shared in this piece will help you explore new opportunities to serve your audience with step-by-step guides. If you have more examples of how-to guides you love, share them with me in the comments below or on Twitter @millanda!

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Understanding & Fulfilling Search Intent - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Google houses the world's information, and it's their goal to serve the best answers to searchers' questions. That means that understanding what your target audience is searching and why is more important than ever — but how do you effectively analyze and fulfill true search intent?

In this brand-new Whiteboard Friday, Britney Muller shares everything you need to begin understanding and fulfilling search intent, plus a free Google Sheets checklist download to help you analyze the SERPs you care about most.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going to be uncovering understanding and fulfilling search intent, and this is a really important topic to understand and better prepare your content around.

I want you to think about this idea that Google houses the world's information. They very likely know what the majority of people searching X are seeking, and they're going to continue to get better and better and better at that.

Understanding search intent

What I would suggest you do and what you arm yourself with is this idea of really leaning on Google to better understand the intent behind any given search. You're probably very familiar with the informational, navigational, investigational, and transactional-related intent types, and you can pull this information, like I said, directly off the SERP.

Analyze: informational, navigational, investigational, transactional?

You're probably very familiar with the informational, navigational, investigational, and transactional-related intent types, and you can pull this information, like I said, directly off the SERP.

• Is there a featured snippet? 
• Is there a knowledge graph? You can pull that sort of information. 
• Are there site links? 
• Is it navigational in nature, people just trying to go to one destination? 
• Is there a comparison table? 
• Are they perhaps investigating?
• Transactional, are there tons of ads? 
• Are there lots of product pages showing up in the results? 
• Is there a shopping carousel? 

You can pull intent types directly from the search. What's interesting though is any given SERP doesn't necessarily have one intent type.

In fact, it likely has a couple of nitty-gritty intent types that Google themselves haven't quite totally figured out. I want to pull back the curtain on how Google is actively trying to get better at understanding intent within questions and answers within content.

They put up a competition to a bunch of data scientists to determine if anyone could build a model that can accurately weight these various intents with the content. 

Question information

There's question information that they wanted the model to predict around: Is this fact-seeking? Does it have multi-intent? Is it not really a question? That's my favorite. Is it well-written? 

• Asker intent understanding
• Body critical
• Conversational
• Expect short answer
• Fact-seeking
• Has commonly accepted answer
• Interestingness to others
• Interestingness to self
• Multi-intent
• Not really a question
• Opinion-seeking
• Well-written

Question type

Then they're also trying to understand the type of question. Is it a definition? Is it instructions? Is it spelling, which is most of my searches? 

• Consequence
• Definition
• Entity
• Instructions
• Procedure
• Reason explanation
• Spelling

Answer information

Then they get into answer information. Is the answer intent helpful? Is it plausible? Is it relevant? Does it satisfy the question? 

• Helpful
• Level of information
• Plausible
• Relevance
• Satisfaction

Answer types

They even drill a bit deeper into answer types. Is it instructions, procedure, well-written? 

• Instructions
• Procedure
• Reason explanation
• Well-written

Again, you see these sort of themes occur. So it's important it's not just these four. It's great to know these and sort of run with them a bit. But put these in your back pocket and know that it goes a lot deeper and it's a lot more complicated than that.

Search Intent Checklist

Let's dig into this checklist of sorts. The idea behind this is that there's a Google sheet that you can have today, make a copy and tweak however you'd like, that walks you through really this first process of understanding the intent and then fulfilling it.

Make a copy of the Search Intent Checklist

Once you do this a couple of times, you're not going to need this checklist. This will become second nature to you. Let's just walk through what this looks like. 

1. Uncover the SERP intent

First, what is the primary SERP intent? For my example, I have phonetic alphabet, informational. Secondary intent might be investigational for the types of content people are looking for.

2. List any SERP features and other SERP notes

I list the SERP features that I notice in the search results. I'm really just making mental notes of what I'm seeing. So for this particular SERP, there were a lot more visuals than I expected, and so I made note of that. That kind of surprised me. I also made note this is the order of the features that are showing up.

3. Read, consume, and take notes about the ranking URLs

The next thing you do is to read and consume all of the ranking URLs. This is so, so important if you're serious about ranking for a particular keyword. You should actively be consuming this content and making notes about topics and entities covered. 

• What sort of multimedia are they using?
• What are the layouts? 
• What does it feel like? 

You can really start to have a better checklist of what does that content look like and what are those expectations. 

4. Scan ranking URLs' Domain Authority with MozBar

Then, ooh, my favorite secret hack is to activate MozBar for the search result page. You can see the Domain Authority and the backlinks for every single URL on a SERP.

A lot of people don't know you can use MozBar directly within Google search results, and it's fantastic. What I use this for, if I want to rank for something like this, I would just evaluate all of the organic DAs, and I would really evaluate that range and see if the website or my client's website might be competitive with it.

If they're not even close, maybe I pivot this and I try to target something more appropriate for them to rank for in the short term. 

Fulfilling search intent

Now the fulfill part, are you fulfilling this intent? 

Page goal

What is the page goal? Every page should have a goal.

Outline scannable framework

I want to just briefly explain what I mean by this. Scannable content is so, so important. More and more people are on mobile. Our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. 

1. Generate 10–20 title ideas and use the extras for social

This idea that you should generate multiple title ideas to come up with the best one, but then use the others for social media. Shout-out to Andy Crestodina, who came up with that, which I love. 

2. Use the inverted pyramid

Use the journalistic style where you tell people the most important information at the top. 

3. Succinct summaries

Make sure you have succinct summaries. Omit needless words, whether that be at the top or at the bottom of your content. It's so important to have. Google loves pulling that information for things like featured snippets. 

4. Scannable subtitles

Make sure you have scannable subtitles. Copyblogger does this beautifully, where you can just scan one of their articles and you quickly understand what the content is about like that. That's incredibly helpful for users. 

5. Leverage multimedia

There's no reason why you couldn't also take a piece of content you're working on and provide other options or other forms for your visitors to consume it. We don't know what any given visitor might be or the position they're in to consume content at that time.

Maybe they're going for a walk and they want to hear audio. It's really great to provide different media types. 

6. Provide relevant next steps

Then lastly, I have this here and here, are you providing relevant next steps? So I really thought about this for someone searching phonetic alphabet that are looking for information.

What might be relevant next steps? It sounds like they're sort of in a learning mode. So why not quiz them on it? Why not entice them to learn more about aviation jargon and language? You can start to like put yourself in the mindset of the user and really try to cultivate logical next steps for someone to go through on your site, so really building out that supportive content.

Make sure you have a CTA

Then lastly, make sure you have a CTA. Hopefully, it's to fulfill the page goal that you set for yourself. But ideally this should become second nature after a couple of passes, where you just have these kind of mental checks in your head and you can quickly and better evaluate search result pages to target and rank and succeed in search. 

 I really look forward to hearing your thoughts and your comments down below. Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I will see you all soon. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Should You Test That? When to Engage in SEO Split Tests

Posted by Portent

This blog was written by Tim Mehta, a former Conversion Rate Optimization Strategist with Portent, Inc.

Running A/B/n experiments (aka “Split Tests”) to improve your search engine rankings has been in the SEO toolkit for longer than many would think. Moz actually published an article back in 2015 broaching the subject, which is a great summary of how you can run these tests.

What I want to cover here is understanding the right times to run an SEO split-test, and not how you should be running them.

I run a CRO program at an agency that’s well-known for SEO. The SEO team brings me in when they are preparing to run an SEO split-test to ensure we are following best practices when it comes to experimentation. This has given me the chance to see how SEOs are currently approaching split-testing, and where we can improve upon the process.

One of my biggest observations when working on these projects has been the most pressing and often overlooked question: “Should we test that?”

Risks of running unnecessary SEO split-tests

Below you will find a few potential risks of running an SEO split-test. You might be willing to take some of these risks, while there are others you will most definitely want to avoid.

Wasted resources

With on-page split-tests (not SEO split-tests), you can be much more agile and launch multiple tests per month without expending significant resources. Plus, the pre-test and post-test analyses are much easier to perform with the calculators and formulas readily available through our tools.

With SEO split-testing, there’s a heavy amount of lifting that goes into planning a test out, actually setting it up, and then executing it.

What you’re essentially doing is taking an existing template of similar pages on your site and splitting it up into two (or more) separate templates. This requires significant development resources and poses more risk, as you can’t simply “turn the test off” if things aren’t going well. As you probably know, once you’ve made a change to hurt your rankings, it’s a lengthy uphill battle to get them back.

The pre-test analysis to anticipate how long you need to run the test to reach statistical significance is more complex and takes up a lot of time with SEO split-testing. It’s not as simple as, “Which one gets more organic traffic?” because each variation you test has unique attributes to it. For example, if you choose to split-test the product page template of half of your products versus the other half of them, the actual products in each variation can play a part in its performance.

Therefore, you have to create a projection of organic traffic for each variation based on the pages that exist within it, and then compare the actual data to your projections. Inherently, using your projection as your main indicator of failure or success is dangerous, because a projection is just an educated guess and not necessarily what reality reflects.

For the post-test analysis, since you’re measuring organic traffic versus a hypothesized projection, you have to look at other data points to determine success. Evan Hall, Senior SEO Strategist at Portent, explains:

“Always use corroborating data. Look at relevant keyword rankings, keyword clicks, and CTR (if you trust Google Search Console). You can safely rely on GSC data if you've found it matches your Google Analytics numbers pretty well.”

The time to plan a test, develop it on your live site, “end” the test (if needed), and analyze the test after the fact are all demanding tasks.

Because of this, you need to make sure you’re running experiments with a strong hypothesis and enough differences in the variation versus the original that you will see a significant difference in performance from them. You also need to corroborate the data that would point to success, as the organic traffic versus your projection alone isn’t reliable enough to be confident in your results.

Unable to scale the results

There are many factors that go into your search engine rankings that are out of your hands. These lead to a robust number of outside variables that can impact your test results and lead to false positives, or false negatives.

This hurts your ability to learn from the test: was it our variation’s template or another outside factor that led to the results? Unfortunately, with Google and other search engines, there’s never a definitive way to answer that question.

Without validation and understanding that it was the exact changes you made that led to the results, you won’t be able to scale the winning concept to other channels or parts of the site. Although, if you are focused more on individual outcomes and not learnings, then this might not be as much of a risk for you.

When to run an SEO split-test

Uncertainty around keyword or query performance

If your series of pages for a particular category have a wide variety of keywords/queries that users search for when looking for that topic, you can safely engage in a meta title or meta description SEO split-test.

From a conversion rate perspective, having a more relevant keyword in relation to a user’s intent will generally lead to higher engagement. Although, as mentioned, most of your tests won’t be winners.

For example, we have a client in the tire retail industry who shows up in the SERPs for all kinds of “tire” queries. This includes things like winter tires, seasonal tires, performance tires, etc. We hypothesized that including the more specific phrase “winter” tires instead of “tires” in our meta titles during the winter months would lead to a higher CTR and more organic traffic from the SERPs. While our results ended up being inconclusive, we learned that changing this meta title did not hurt organic traffic or CTR, which gives us a prime opportunity for a follow-up test.

You can also utilize this tactic to test out a higher-volume keyword in your metadata. But this approach is also never a sure thing, and is worth testing first. As highlighted in this Whiteboard Friday from Moz, they saw “up to 20-plus-percent drops in organic traffic after updating meta information in titles and so forth to target the more commonly-searched-for variant.”

In other words, targeting higher-volume keywords seems like a no-brainer, but it’s always worth testing first.

Proof of concept and risk mitigation for large-scale sites

This is the most common call for running an SEO split-test. Therefore, we reached out to some experts to get their take on when this scenario turns into a prime opportunity for testing.

Jenny Halasz, President at JLH Marketing, talks about using SEO split-tests to prove out concepts or ideas that haven’t gotten buy-in:

"What I have found many times is that suggesting to a client they try something on a smaller subset of pages or categories as a ‘proof of concept’ is extremely effective. By keeping a control and focusing on trends rather than whole numbers, I can often show a client how changing a template has a positive impact on search and/or conversions.”

She goes on to reference an existing example that emphasizes an alternate testing tactic other than manipulating templates:

“I'm in the middle of a test right now with a client to see if some smart internal linking within a subset of products (using InLinks and OnCrawl's InRank) will work for them. This test is really fun to watch because the change is not really a template change, but a navigation change within a category. If it works as I expect it to, it could mean a whole redesign for this client.”

Ian Laurie emphasizes the use of SEO split-testing as a risk mitigation tool. He explains:

“For me, it’s about scale. If you’re going to implement a change impacting tens or hundreds of thousands of pages, it pays to run a split test. Google’s unpredictable, and changing that many pages can have a big up- or downside. By testing, you can manage risk and get client (external or internal) buy-in on enterprise sites.”

If you’re responsible for a large site that is heavily dependent on non-branded organic searches, it pays to test before releasing any changes to your templates, regardless of the size of the change. In this case, you aren’t necessarily hoping for a “winner.” Your desire should be “does not break anything.”

Evan Hall emphasizes that you can utilize split-testing as a tool for justifying smaller changes that you’re having trouble getting buy-in for:

“Budget justification is for testing changes that require a lot of developer hours or writing. Some e-commerce sites may want to put a blurb of text on every PLP, but that might require a lot of writing for something not guaranteed to work. If the test suggests that content will provide 1.5% more organic traffic, then the effort of writing all that text is justifiable.”

Making big changes to your templates

In experimentation, there’s a metric called a “Minimum Detectable Effect” (MDE). This metric represents the percentage difference in performance you expect the variation to have versus the original. The more changes and more differences between your original and your variation, the higher your MDE should be.

The graph below emphasizes that the lower your MDE (lift), the more traffic you will need to reach a statistically significant result. In turn, the higher the MDE (lift), the less sample size you will need.

For example, If you are redesigning the site architecture of your product page templates, you should consider making it noticeably different from both a visual and back-end (code structure) perspective. While user research or on-page A/B testing may have led to the new architecture or design, it’s still unclear whether the proposed changes will impact rankings.

This should be the most common reason that you run an SEO split test. Given all of the subjectivity of the pre-test and post-test analysis, you want to make sure your variation yields a different enough result to be confident that the variation did in fact have a significant impact. Of course, with bigger changes, comes bigger risks.

While larger sites have the luxury of testing smaller things, they are still at the mercy of their own guesswork. For less robust sites, if you are going to run an SEO split test on a template, it needs to be different enough not only for users to behave differently but for Google to evaluate and rank your page differently as well.

Communicating experimentation for SEO split-tests

Regardless of your SEO expertise, communicating with stakeholders about experimentation requires a skill set of its own.

The expectations with testing are highly volatile. Some people expect every test to be a winner. Some expect you to give them definitive answers on what will work better. Unfortunately, these are false expectations. To avoid them, you need to establish realistic expectations early on for your manager, client, or whoever you are running a split test for.

Expectation 1: Most of your tests will fail

This understanding is a pillar of all successful experimentation programs. For people not close to the subject, it’s also the hardest pill to swallow. You have to get them to accept the fact that the time and effort that goes into the first iteration of a test will most likely lead to an inconclusive or losing test.

The most valuable aspect of experimentation and split-testing is the iterative process each test undergoes. The true outcome of successful experimentation, regardless if it’s SEO split-testing or other types, is the culmination of multiple tests that lead to gradual increases in major KPIs.

Expectation 2: You are working with probabilities, not sure things

This expectation applies especially to SEO split-testing, as you are utilizing a variety of metrics as indirect signals of success. This helps people understand that, even if you reach 99% significance, there are no guarantees of the results once the winning variation is implemented.

This principle also gives you wiggle-room for pre-test and post-test analysis. That doesn’t mean you can manipulate the data in your favor, but does mean you don’t need to spend hours and hours coming up with an empirically data-driven projection. It also allows you to utilize your subjective expert opinion based on all the metrics you are analyzing to determine success.

Expectation 3: You need a large enough sample size

Without a large enough sample size, you shouldn’t even entertain the idea of running an SEO split test unless your stakeholders are patient enough to wait several months for results.

Sam Nenzer, a consultant for SearchPilot and Distilled, explains how to know if you have enough traffic for testing:

“Over the course of our experience with SEO split testing, we’ve generated a rule of thumb: if a site section of similar pages doesn’t receive at least 1,000 organic sessions per day in total, it’s going to be very hard to measure any uplift from your split test.”

Therefore, if your site doesn’t have the right traffic, you may want to default to low-risk implementations or competitive research to validate your ideas.

Expectation 4: The goal of experimentation is to mitigate risk with the potential of performance improvement

The key term here is “potential” performance improvement. If your test yields a winning variation, and you implement it across your site, don’t expect the same results to happen as you saw during the test. The true goal for all testing is to introduce new ideas to your site with very low risk and potential for improved metrics.

For example, if you are updating the architecture or code of a PDP template to accommodate a Google algorithm change, the goal isn’t necessarily to increase organic traffic. The goal is to reduce the negative impact you may see from the algorithm change.

Let your stakeholders know that you can also utilize split-testing to improve business value or internal efficiencies. This includes things like releasing code updates that users never see, or a URL/CMS update for groups of pages or several microsites at a time.

Summary

While it’s tempting to run an SEO split test, it’s vital that you understand the inherent risks of it to ensure that you’re getting the true value you need out of it. This will help inform you on when the scenario calls for a split test or an alternative approach. You also need to be communicating experimentation with realistic expectations from the get-go.

There are major inherent risks of engaging with SEO split-testing that you don’t see with on-page tests that CRO usually runs, including wasted resources and non scalable results.

Some of the scenarios where you should feel confident in engaging with an SEO split test include where you’re uncertain of keyword and query performance, proof-of-concept and risk mitigation for larger-scale websites, justification for ideas that require robust resources, and when you’re considering making big changes to your templates.

And remember, one of the biggest challenges of experimentation is properly communicating it to others. Everyone has different expectations for testing, so you need to get ahead of it and address those expectations right away.

If there are other scenarios for or risks associated with SEO split-testing that you’ve seen in your own work, please share in the comments below.

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Help Us Improve: The 2020 Moz Blog Reader Survey Is Here

Posted by morgan.mcmurray

It's been a few years since we last asked you to tell us what you love (and don't love so much) about the Moz Blog, and since then our company, our industry, and our world have undergone massive shifts. 

With so much having changed, we wanted to be sure we're still living up to the high standards we set for this blog, and that we're still providing as valuable an experience as we can for you all. That's where you come in today.

To help us serve you better, please consider going through the survey below, which asks about who you are, what challenges you face, and what you'd like to see more of on the Moz Blog.

We'll publish the results along with our takeaways in a few weeks, and will use them to guide our work going forward. From all of us at Moz, thanks in advance for your time!

TAKE THE SURVEY

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!